 So now we are going to turn our attention to explore energy and other ways for students to get involved. We have Diana Greg with us. Diana is the Managing Director of Explore Energy. She's part of the teaching team for Understanding Energy, which is a great class, by the way, and serves as an advisor to CEG atmosphere and energy students and also for pre-major students. Diana is going to be talking to us, as I said, about explore energy, internships, and other ways to get involved. This panel is going to span the break. We'll have a break in the middle of it, probably around 10, 25 to 40, 10, 40. And students, you can, Diana, will stick around during the break to answer questions, and then we'll have part two of it after the break. So over to you, Diana. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you, Kate. Thank you for the nice introduction. So hi, everyone. Nice to see you all. As Kate said, yes. I'm the Managing Director for Explore Energy before I get into telling you a little bit about what that means. I'm just a little bit more about myself. My background is chemical engineering, this is what I did my undergrad in, worked in industry for about four years before I came back and got my master's and PhD here at Stanford in the atmosphere energy program under civil and environmental engineering. So things that I've kind of worked on in my background, I've worked a little bit in the chemical industry, the oil industry, and then did a lot of my research based on air pollution, in particular looking at the air pollution impacts from biofuels like ethanol and E85, and did a postdoc here at Stanford looking at sustainable transportation. So those are kind of my areas of background and expertise. So if there's areas that interest you, please do reach out to me. I love to chat about all things energy, really. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what Explore Energy is and some of the other things I do, like Kate said, I also teach here at Stanford. So I'll tell you a little bit about that. But Explore Energy is something new that we're actually trying here at pre-court that we're just getting started on. So let me share this with you. And it's really all about our student engagement efforts. So Explore Energy is meant to be something that is a resource for all of you to help navigate all the amazing energy related things that happen on campus at Stanford. So it is something that we're still building out. We hope to even have some sort of launch event because part of it will be connecting people that are interested in working in the energy area at Stanford. So connecting all of you, continuing to connect all of you, just like you get to connect to each other in this awesome energy at week. So one of the things, since you guys are just coming to Stanford, you may or may not know about is something called the Long Range Plan. You may hear this mentioned a few times. This Long Range Plan is something Stanford has put together to try to be the vision of how Stanford is going to take itself in its next steps in the future. You've heard a little bit about something called the School of Sustainability or something like that mentioned this week. That is something that has kind of come out of this planning process. We are also trying to support some of these really exciting things that Stanford is trying to do around experiential learning, energy literacy, and explore energy is part of that. As I think you guys already know, because you guys have a very diverse background and you've come to energy from different viewpoints, energy is very interdisciplinary. There are aspects of energy across all seven schools. There's all sorts of different majors that have energy emphasis. There's all sorts of courses, faculty, internships, and so we're trying to be part of the portal for you guys to know what's going on on campus through Explore Energy. You guys already have, I would say, a leg up on most students coming in because you've done this week at Energy Add. So you've already kind of been given this landscape of what we have to offer here at Stanford, which is just amazing in the energy realm. But we're trying to be that resource for those that don't get to do something like Energy Add or that realize later that the energy is an interest of theirs. To talk about the diversity of energy, people care about energy for lots of different reasons, whether it's environmental or energy access or equity or economic. There's all sorts of reasons we care about energy, and that's part of the reasons it's such a diverse, really exciting topic. So where we're starting in terms of launching Explore Energy and providing resources for you is with a website. So I encourage you to check this out, but this is still very much under development. We're just getting this going, but it'll be a great place for you to keep checking out if you have questions about what kind of courses are good for energy, what internships, what opportunities there are for you, and even beyond when you'll find your time at Stanford goes by pretty quickly. When you start looking, thinking about careers relate, if you have what careers related to energy, this will also be a good resource for you for that. And I'm here also to just talk about it if you want to reach out directly. So one of the things I want to kind of give you a highlight on during my time is some of the awesome courses that you can take. I don't want to repeat any of the courses you've already heard about this week. So I know Sally mentioned some of her courses, and Alicia mentioned some of her courses. Those are all part of the awesome variety of energy courses depending on what you're interested in. The course that I teach is something called Understanding Energy. It's a course that's been taught for over 30 years, and a version of it has been taught since the late 70s actually. It is basically the whole energy landscape. So I took this course when I came to Stanford in 2004, and it literally was very transformative for me, so I feel very fortunate that now I get to teach it. It is looking at energy from all the energy resources. So we go from all the fossil fuels into renewables, and that includes, you know, coal, oil, natural gas, of course, but nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, ocean. We cover the whole breadth of energy resources. We normally do these awesome field trips. We won't be able to offer those this fall because of the pandemic, but we allow our alumni from the class to come on future field trips. So if you take the class, for example, in the fall and we're able to offer them in the spring or the next fall, you're welcome to join us on some field trips to places like the Tesla Gigafactory, the Diablo nuclear power plant, some of the, we go to a wind farm. You can see that behind me. We go and they actually shut down one of the wind turbines. We get to go inside and look at it. Just makes it the energy much more real if you haven't been able to experience those things and we get to talk to the people that are actually working in these industries. Just part of the picture that we're trying to give that whole energy landscape. The last thing I'll say about our class is I work with a team of instructors. We all have different backgrounds. Mine's more technical. There's more on the policy and the business side of energy. So we bring all of those perspectives to class because we're trying to cover energy not just from a technology standpoint, but from a policy and economic, a market, environmental, all the aspects that go into energy. So I encourage you to check that out as one of the courses. Another course that we also offer, and this is a winter quarter course, but it's actually a spring quarter, a spring break course. It's called Extreme Energy Efficiency. This is meant to be a week long course at Rocky Mountain Institute in Basalt, Colorado. So you can see the students and it's snowing on us. We're standing outside Amery Levin's house. Amery Levin's is the co-founder of Rocky Mountain Institute and the instructor for this course. So really digging into energy efficiency from industry, transportation, electricity, buildings. We get all of that in this course. A lot of fun. Right now we're not really sure if it's... I mean, I think we're hoping that we can try to do it live, but most likely it's going to be a remote class this year. But again, it's still going to cover a lot of these really in-depth energy efficiency topics. So I encourage you to, if that's an area of interest, check that course out. One of the things that's also exciting, I think at Stanford, and I see this every year, is that there are brand new courses offered every year and almost every quarter. We bring in guest lecturers or guest speakers or a new course gets created. So I encourage you to continue to check, explore courses for new courses. These are just two that are happening this fall. Applied Hope, Amery Levin's is going to be teaching a class on whole systems thinking on energy solutions, covering a variety of topics. And then Holmes Hummel and Anthly Kinslow, both of who are graduates of Stanford and got their PhD. Holmes and the E-IPER program, Anthony and the CEE program are going to be doing a racial equity and energy course. So I'm putting this up here because they're brand new, but just also give you a sense that there's this breadth of courses. I often wish I could just kind of take all of the courses that are offered in energy. So check them out if those are areas that you're interested in. And then I think this has been mentioned before, but one of the flagship ways of just kind of keeping up to date on everything that's going on energy-wise is our energy seminar. Pre-court offers are our first energy seminar. We'll be on the 14th. Daniel Juergen will be giving that seminar. He has a new book out. You may have heard of some of his other books like The Prize. I think that's probably the one that he's most known for. So Energy Seminar is just a great time that we come together and we give the students chances to ask questions of a lot of leaders in the energy sector. You will find that there is no shortage of things for you to do while you're at Stanford. And I encourage you to take advantage of all of those things. What's going to come next is you're going to meet some students and they'll talk about some of the things they've gotten involved in. But getting involved while you're at Stanford and then also thinking about what's next steps. So I've just put up some of the things that are ways to connect when you are starting to think about your career. There's mentoring that is offered, the energy clubs, both GSB and Stanford Energy Club, which you'll hear more about in a minute. You already heard about SPI, Stanford Professionals in Energy. That's a great resource for you to continue to stay connected to the energy community at Stanford. And it's just a great network when you're looking at jobs and things like that. So just a listing of other ways to get involved. I didn't want to take too much time talking about me and the things that I do. I really rather you guys get to talk to students that are working and doing things in these areas and what they have done. But I am available if you have questions as a resource and you're welcome to ask me or the students any questions during the break. But like I said, get involved in stuff. You have no shortage of opportunities. Just find a few that are interesting to you and take advantage of your time here at Stanford like you already are starting with Energy app. So what I'm going to do next is I'm going to have free students talk about their internship fellowship experiences this past summer. They'll tell you a little bit about the programs they did and then their their own projects. And then I'll also have the president of the Stanford Energy Club that's going to kind of introduce you to that before we go to break. So with that, we're going to start with Sendhu who is going to talk to you a little bit about her experience as a Stanford Energy internship in California, the West fellow that is now the Schultz Energy fellow. So Sendhu, I think you're on. Again, my name is Sendhu Nathan. I am a rising fourth year in chemical engineering, a PhD student, and I did the Schultz Energy Fellowship program this summer really quickly to summarize just what's on the slide. It's a paid 10 week internship that places you at a state agency or office mostly in California. But as you can see, there are a few opportunities outside of the state to work on energy questions in like a government space. Some examples of what that could look like are focused on like transportation electrification to decarbonize that sector or thinking about incorporating climate risk into energy planning. So for example, the wildfires that we're experiencing right now, how do we think about the future of our electricity system when we know these things are going to happen every year. For me personally, I worked at the California Energy Commission this summer virtually, although typically it would be in person in Commissioner Patty Monaghan's office. She is the transportation lead. So she's really focused on reaching all of California's transportation related goals. And my job, I kind of had some main like internship projects, but I also was kind of given roles as like an additional advisor. So I did things like provide briefings and attend meetings with her to support just like the office's efforts. So that kind of work was very fast paced. But then I also had two kind of projects I worked on over the entire 10 week period. The first was supporting the vehicle grid integration roadmap, which is this really lengthy technical document that outlines kind of the technological advancements we need and the policies that we need to develop to ensure that we maximize all the benefits we get as more and more people in California adopt electric vehicles. So we're not putting strain on the electricity grid and we're also taking advantage of kind of the storage that we get from these car batteries. So I did things like designing graphics, I wrote some sections related to equity and just like thinking about how different consumers have different needs. And I also did some editing of the main report as well. So that's going to come out in like the next six months or so. And I also did an independent research memo focused more specifically on equity because that was kind of the topic that interested me in transportation electrification. So there are kind of different charging modes that cost different amounts. So like a faster charging mode is going to cost more. And that's going to be an additional barrier to a low income driver on top of how expensive an EV can be. So I did some research on whether there were opportunities for lower cost charging options where those would be and what that might look like. I presented that to the office and I also presented it to some high level staff outside of the office. And obviously we're not developing policies like in 10 weeks but I was able to like get the ball moving. So when I left there were all these discussions already happening about what the next steps were going to be and like what sort of policies they could develop around this and funding opportunities. So I found it really really exciting and rewarding. And like I think like a lot of internship programs will say that you're going to do meaningful work. And I also felt like it was high priority as well. So something that I did was going to be immediately useful to the commissioner and the commission. And I highly recommend that you apply to the program in December or January when that application opens up. I think it's a pretty low barrier to apply. You don't need like references. You don't have to have a background related to the topics of the job. So my research is not really related to these kind of high level policy transportation electrification questions. But if you have an interest in energy and an interest in public service I think that that is all that you really need. So I definitely endorse this program and I'm happy to take questions later when we get to that Awesome. Thank you. So if you have questions for Cindy or we'll do those during the break. Next I'd like Mackenzie to talk about her fellowship. Great. So hi everybody. My name is Mackenzie. I am a rising fifth year PhD student also in chemical engineering. And so my background is actually in materials development. And so while I'm kind of researching the energy space I'm very much so in like a wet chemistry lab but I kind of became interested more broadly in how the research I was doing kind of fits into the bigger picture in society. So basically a technical economic analysis and energy policy. And so that's what drew me to the Schneider Fellowship. So basically the Schneider Fellowship puts you in partners you with an NGO. So it's not exactly in government like Cindy was but it's working with governments mainly in an advocacy role. And so I have really enjoyed my experience. I have been with the Environmental Defense Fund but there are several other different NGOs that you could be placed with. But the Environmental Defense Fund or EDF as they're more commonly known as is essentially like a team of scientists, lawyers, and also economists and business people. So they work together with governments, corporations, as well as academia to try to find practical solutions to some of the climate challenges today. And my role was I came to EDF as a part of the vehicle electrification team. So obviously that's a hot topic right now. And my job was kind of to look and see how EDF might be able to support lithium ion battery manufacturing sustainability. So right now the team is really pushing electrification forward specifically in medium and heavy duty vehicles. But they haven't thought that much about about the kind of life cycle impacts of these batteries. So that was my role. And it's been a lot of independent work, I would say. But also like you said kind of I've gotten to work on side projects where I've been more working in a team capacity and kind of being a supporting role for some of the other team members. And yeah, I think that it's been a really great experience. I didn't have necessarily like the most the best qualifications going into it. But that shouldn't limit you. So all I'm trying to say is that if you are interested in this, you have a passion, then you should definitely apply and go for it. I think I'll learn a lot. Yeah, if you have questions, I'm happy to answer more during the break. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mackenzie. And then for our final spotlighted fellowship, I have Lizzie to talk to you about her experience. Hi everyone, I'm Lizzie. I'm a second year master student in the Sustainable Design and Construction program, which is within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Stanford. So I have a background in mechanical engineering and I worked for a few years before coming back to school. But this past summer, I was a part of the SMART internship program, which is out of the Bits and Watts initiative through Stanford's Precourt Institute. And there were eight interns and the internship was eight weeks and everything was remote. But at the beginning of the summer, we had the opportunity to propose our own microgrid related research project. And among the eight students, we ultimately decided on three projects. So there were three different groups of us. And each group had very involved mentorship from Stanford professors and leaders from the energy industry. So I was on the first project to actually touch on the other two first. And all three of these projects provided like a very wide range of opportunities depending on your interest and skills. So it was a really good mix to keep all eight interns involved and interested throughout the summer. So project number two was the Stanford Community Microgrid Design. And Stanford already has the new central energy facility. And group two's goal for the summer was to incorporate that energy facility with different strategies that could create an entire campus microgrid for Stanford. And they were basing that on energy consumption and weather patterns. So the goal would be for Stanford to be fully autonomous during a main grid outage. So this group, they basically explored different power generation sources, different types of energy sources, and looked at the cost effectiveness and the environmental impact of each of the strategies that they chose. Group three also had a pretty technical project. They were focusing on reinforcement learning for microgrid operations and design. And so instead of focusing just on one specific microgrid, they were kind of looking at the bigger picture of how reinforcement learning could be applied to microgrids worldwide. And they worked a lot with mentors from industry that are starting R&D along these lines. And then my group was the Global Microgrid Comparison Study. And we didn't have such a technical internship, but we really did a lot of deep dive into why do microgrids exist? What benefits can they provide to the energy sector? And so I really liked our project in that it was a great tool for networking throughout the microgrid industry. So for the first four weeks of the summer, we spent, I don't know how many interviews we had with experts from the microgrid industry just really gaining insight into why do people build microgrids, but what are the main challenges in future widespread deployment of microgrids? And so ultimately, we were able to determine the key challenges that the microgrid industry faces, but what future innovations are the most promising to overcome these challenges? And I'm happy to answer any questions in the Q&A. Awesome. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Finally, before break, we have Zuliana to tell you about the Stanford Energy Club. Thanks, Diana. Yeah, so president of the Stanford Energy Club this year. And this is the primary and largest student-led organization on campus, or energy student organization on campus, in addition to the GSB Energy Club. So we're a pretty even mix of undergraduate and graduate students, and our members are also from all seven schools on campus. So in total, we have about 30 to 40 active officers. And then throughout the year, we put on a number of major events that have a couple hundred attendees each. And then we also have a number of smaller panels and social events every couple of weeks that are much smaller and much more intimate. So I'd highly recommend getting involved. It's a really great way to meet other students interested in energy, especially given the remote format of this year. Our team is putting in a lot of extra effort to figure out creative ways of getting students from across campus to get to meet each other. And so we'd love to see you at some of our events or even join our team this year. With that being said, I'd like to spend the last few minutes before the break, going over some of the more concrete ways that students can involve with the Energy Club. I can put some of these links in the chat, but first, I'd like to plug our mailing list. This is probably the easiest and also easiest way to get involved with the club. And it's also the most central, one of the most centralized ways to receive notifications about different job and internship listings off campus. And this also goes for different energy-related events and seminars that take place on campus. And we typically stick to about one newsletter per week and we avoid spam otherwise. So again, I highly recommend signing up. Beyond our mailing list, some of the more hands-on ways to get involved outside our projects include some of the more hands-on ways to get involved with the club include our projects. So these are 20-week long part-time projects with off-campus and on-campus entities. These kick off in September and January and typically take about five to 10 hours per week. They're a real effective way to explore energy topics outside your coursework and research. And we're really trying to develop projects that allow students to either explore these new areas of interest or deep dive into the industry side of research projects that students are already conducting. So regardless of where you are on that spectrum, I would definitely recommend applying once you release that application information at the start of September through our mailing list. Second, we also have the events I mentioned earlier. And so these include our energy week winter conference. We also have our networking night, which is basically a energy-focused jobs fair. We also have the clean tech challenge and the number of like speaker series and book clubs and socials throughout the year. And lastly, I would highly recommend of course actually joining the team to help put on some of these events. It's a pretty low-time commitment of about five hours a week or less. A part of that time is just casually hanging out with other students who are interested in energy. So it's a really great way to meet also faculty and industry representatives actually coordinate putting on these events. So to close out, if you're interested in learning more, I'd highly recommend signing up for the mailing list and also attending our energy trivia night in a couple weeks when we'll also be sharing more about how to get involved this year. And like everyone else, I'll also be sticking around through the break to answer any questions. Awesome. Thank you so much, Juliana and everyone for talking about your experiences and your fellowships. So one thing I do want to point out about a lot of those internships and fellowships a lot of times applications start to be due around January, February. So although it seems early to start thinking about what you want to do for the summer in your fall quarter, sometimes it's good to start thinking about that over, you know, maybe between fall and winter quarters. So you can start putting those applications in. The final thing I'll say before we take a short break is because there was a lot of chat about t-shirts at EnergyEd. Come take understanding energy. We give out a t-shirt. I'm wearing our understanding energy t-shirt. A lot of the students that you've got to talk to have been through that and have gotten their t-shirt. So I think what's coming up next is break. And so I think we'll just start taking questions if you have any questions about any of the fellowships you just heard about or a Stanford Energy Club. Like Juliana said, Stanford Energy Club is a great way, another way to really know what's going on on campus energy wise. So like she said, I encourage you to sign up for their mailing list to stay informed. Sorry, I hate being the guy who keeps asking questions. Fascinating, great conference. So thank you. Just a very quick question for Juliana just in terms of the Stanford Energy Club. Your winter conference in the spring hackathon at this stage, are they going to be online? The reason I ask is that not all graduates on campus at least for the first quarter. So just wanted to see what if there's a way to join virtually. Yes, so our hackathon has historically been in person, but beginning this spring we switched over to a virtual format to a pretty positive reception from both our industry sponsors and actual attendees. And so at the moment we're planning on continuing with a virtual format for both energy week in the winter and then also the hackathon in the spring. Fantastic, thank you. Here's a question for Lily about the smart internship or Lizzie, sorry about the smart internship. Have you published your global microgrid comparison study? Yeah, so we actually have not published it yet. We'll be wrapping it up within the next couple of weeks. I'm actually not sure if it's going to be made public because we did only have eight weeks to compile information of microgrids across the globe. So I think what Bits and Watts is looking at doing is using our research as the baseline to be built upon within the next year or so. But our paper will be available within the Bits and Watts program. I'm just not sure if it will be available outside of that for now. Hi, I have a question. It's okay for me to ask. Of course. Also, for Lizzie, I'm super interested in sort of the insights you came out, you know, from the research you've done. As you mentioned, you have, you're probably not publishing that, but like I wonder if you could share like a few examples or, you know, insights that you've learned from doing the research here. Thanks. Sure. So the thing about microgrids is that they're very context dependent, you know. Somebody can have completely different reasons for installing a microgrid in one place first another. And it's very dependent on local climate, local policy and regulation, and how the funding for the microgrid is going to come about. But throughout our interviews, it seems that the top three reasons for microgrid deployment would be access to energy. So this is largely for areas that were previously not connected to a main grid, whether that's in a country like the US or in developing countries. Microgrids are taking off very well in many countries in Africa, for example. So access would be one main reason for deployment. Resilience is another key one. But resilience kind of gets tricky because it's hard to quantify the benefits of that or value the benefits of it. So when I say resilience, I mean that a microgrid is less likely to lose power during a severe weather event, for example. So in California, there has been a strong push for microgrids for cases like wildfires going on. So if the main grid has to shut down, the microgrid can come in and provide that resiliency during extreme weather events. So that would be another main factor. And then the third one would be autonomy. So that's just an entity wanting to be able to have more control over their power generation and usage. Because with the controls that come with the microgrid, it makes it easier to shed peak load or have demand response. So those would be the main benefits. For the main challenges, the way that we structured our paper, we separated it into technology, policy, and economic challenges. With the technology challenges, it seemed like the biggest ones were system integration. So not only do you have to get all of the different pieces of equipment to coordinate and integrate with each other, but you also have to get the microgrid to interconnect seamlessly with the grid. And just because there are so many moving parts, that can be a big challenge. For policy, a couple of items that we focused on were net metering. So for example, one of the smallest microgrids you could have would be home solar and storage. And if you produce more than you need, you can sell it back to the grid. But utility companies don't always like that, because that reduces their revenue. Not only are they not selling you power, they have to pay you for the power that you're now creating. And so in some cases, there has been pushback for microgrid deployment from utilities because it hurts their financial model. And then from the economic standpoint, I think probably one of the most interesting challenges that we identified was the time horizon. So some microgrid projects can take like 10 years to be built. And the longer it takes, the more likely you are to lose hype on building it in the first place. Because people really want a microgrid when there's a power outage. But there aren't that many power outages. So once they kind of forget how bad it was to not have power, they kind of stop working towards that microgrid deployment. One really good example was Hurricane Sandy in New York. So what was that 2012 or something around there? They almost immediately started designing a microgrid to go into a place called Hunt's Point, I think it is, or Hunt's Place in New York. And it's still not built yet and probably won't be finalized until 2022 just because they kind of lost that momentum along the way. And so the longer the project is, the more expensive it ultimately ends up being. Looks like we have a student that worked on the Hunt's Point microgrid project. That's cool. Yeah, that's me. I'm Royce. Definitely did not actually implement it. I was the one who actually worked on financing it from the city's perspective. So how was that experience? Good. It was a, I don't know how much you know about city budgeting, but it's a lot of different players involved. You have like five different agencies who have to get approvals. And my agency, the office management budget is the one who ultimately approves financing for it. So it was messy, but ultimately one of the greatest projects that actually approved. Awesome. It's really cool to see all the connections. Yeah. I had a question about the Stanford Energy Club. I'm really interested to learn more about the projects. I know they were spoken about a bit, but is there an opportunity like for club members to initiate a project? Or is it more partnerships with exterior groups? Yeah, we definitely welcome students initiating their own projects. And then on our end, if you want any support with recruiting new students to join you with the project, that's definitely an option. So could a student like for example, I'm very interested in entrepreneurship and technology development. So has there been cases in the past where as part of the Stanford Energy Club, that was like the starting point of something like that where a project might have entailed something that later on became a venture or a significant project that was worked on in a lab or maybe in the product realization lab or something like that? Yeah, not exactly that case, but something very similar is we've had a graduate student group that was I think already Tom got funded. So they're probably a little bit further along in their development of their concept, but they recruited a bunch of students within the Energy Club and were able to continue working with the project. And then on that note, I think the session after this break with Stanford Climate Ventures will be very relevant for figuring out how to assemble a team and then work on very early stage ideas on campus related to entrepreneurship. Awesome, thank you. Does that answer your question a little bit more? Yeah, yeah, thank you. Okay, Diane, I feel free to start up again whenever you're ready. Great, let's get started. I am for this next part, you guys are going to hear from Joel Monthly who's going to talk about an awesome class called Stanford Climate Ventures. And so I'm going to hand it over to him and his team to tell you all about it. Yeah, I've had a lot of students go through this class. This again is a class, especially if you're really interested in entrepreneurship and startups. It's a great way to go. So Joel, would you like to take it? All right, excellent. So I thought that Josh's question led into this very well to Juliana and actually Juliana and Paul are the TAs for this class. We're grateful to be here for the event organizers, including Dr. Grag. Our co-professor, David Danielson is currently on a Zoom with Bill Gates discussing the next wave of climate venture capital and he sends his best regards. So we've got myself, Joel Moxley, also Lauren Dunford and Tim Latimer, you know, here to talk about Stanford climate ventures. And to kind of kick us off, I remember when I was in my, you know, Kimmy PhD orientation and what was going through my head, I had this big opportunity and community of, you know, kind of great people. And I was trying to figure out how I was going to, you know, kind of use this to, you know, launch my life forward. And so Lauren and Tim, do you want to kind of share some memories from your Stanford orientation and kind of set the context a little bit? Sure. I can go first because I actually didn't find out about SCV in the orientation. I found out through a cold email in December and saw what the class was and just said, oh my gosh, that's a hundred percent perfect. We were just starting to think about building a climate-related venture. And I remember sitting down with the teaching team thinking about if it was going to be a good fit and just feeling completely hooked. I'll share more about the experience of the class after Joel gives the background. But I wish I had heard about it in orientation, so I could have been planning my entire Stanford time around it. That's awesome. Tim, how about you? Yeah, I think I was, I came into Stanford the fall of 2015 in memories of orientation. One of which is that that was similar to this year, a record heat here. And so we got to learn a lot about the campus heating and cooling system because it was, it couldn't keep up with how hot it was outside. So that was a really interesting, you know, hands-on energy orientation moment. But it was super fun to be in a group of very interdisciplinary people passionate about climate change and energy. And I think I knew I was in the right place. Because one of the first lecturers was by a professor named Dan Riker who is with the Steyer-Taylor Center at Stanford. And like one of his first slides was all about how geothermal energy could like really be the clean energy solution that solves all problems. And I will talk about this later. Passionate entrepreneur about geothermal energy. It's a great clean energy resource, but no one ever talks about it since kind of the forgotten renewable. And like day one, I was like, I'm in the right place. Look at this prominent day one feature all about geothermal. I made the right decision. So I was very excited to have that experience in orientation and just get to meet all the professors and classmates and everything. It was a wonderful time. Okay, awesome. Thank you, Lauren. And thank you, Tim. Let's go to the next slide. So what we're going to do here is talk a little bit about the class. And then we're going to hand it off to Lauren and then to Tim to start to talk about their companies that came out of their experience in the class. So this is a little bit of preaching to the choir, but we all know that climate is the biggest issue that we're facing both for our generation, but potentially, you know, overall for humanity. I think the thing that I'll underline here is that our world economy is about a hundred trillion dollars annually. And at minimum, we need to take out 80% of the carbon dioxide by 2050. This is an unprecedented economic opportunity, because if you think about it, every 1% that we reduce CO2 is multiple exon mobiles. So there are some major companies to be built here. But these technologies we know from experience take a lot of time to scale, you know, just take a look at Tesla. We need large world scale technologies. It's about 20 years to get them fully up to impact and usually about 10 years to get it ready to, you know, to get to that scale. So that means that the new climate ventures for 2050 need to be started today. You know, right now is the opportunity. Let's move to the next slide, please. So the goal of the class is to combine this problem, the largest facing humanity with the best entrepreneurship ecosystem in the entire world, no question. And there are a lot of entrepreneurship classes on campus. And so what we try to differentiate on is a specific network within energy and climate. And we try to have each one of the teams talk to at least 70 experts that are within our network. And that's where we that's where we differentiate. So beyond the actual concept that people work on during the class, some people have taken it, you know, upwards of three times. It's really the way that I think about it is that after my PhD, I worked as what's called an entrepreneur in residence or EIR at a venture capital firm. And it's really the skill set that you need to kind of go run a concept all the way to ground. And so that's not just for being an entrepreneur, but it's for being an academic or working in an industry. You want to be able to take a concept and gather all of the information you need to, you know, to about to evaluate it and and potentially do something with it. So that's the skill set that we're trying to give, give students. The goal of the class is not just to, you know, like Lauren and Tim launch a venture or something like that. The goal is to give the the students the ability and the tool set to to go out there and, you know, run these concepts to ground. All right. Next slide, please. So, you know, quickly my background is a ground game and starting companies and funding companies out, you know, after my after my Kimmy PhD, I want to focus on Professor Danielson. He has the best network in all of energy and climate. He got his start after his MIT PhD in materials. He worked in venture capital, then he was the co-founder of the Department of Energy RPE program where he was then picked out to head energy efficiency and renewable energy. It's a $2 billion per year program, you know, with groups like NREL that report into that a Senate confirmed position. And this has just helped him build his his energy network, you know, kind of for his whole career. When he spun out of DOE, he landed at Stanford and breakthrough energy ventures. You know, it's a Bill Gates back climate venture capital fund. And that's and that's Dave's background. Next slide, please. So the overview, we've gotten a lot of questions via email from what's in the course description. So we're all in unprecedented territory with the, you know, with the Zoom classes and things like this. And so what we are focused on for the fall is instead of doing the projects, we're going to have all of the experts out there come in and talk to the students about white space, you know, for starting new companies and new technologies. So we've got a landscape overview of climate innovation. We're going to be talking about cement and concrete. We're going to be talking about methane emissions. We're going to be talking about liquid fuels for long haul transport. We're talking about hydrogen for decarbonization. We're talking about mining textiles. We're basically trying to talk about all of the areas where we view as fertile ground for starting a company. So, you know, starting an electric car company, that's, you know, not to say not to minimize it, but basically, there's a lot of focus in the area. What we try to do is give students the ability to see things where there's going to need to be a company two or three years from now and now is the time to start building it. So that's the overview for the fall. And then we're going to hit the ground running in the winter and the spring focused around project teams, you know, that we're gathering out of the fall. So that's the plan for the quarter. Next slide, please. And so we try to not overemphasize starting companies out of the class. That's a byproduct of, you know, what we're doing. But, you know, we have had some impact since 2016, the autumn of 2016. We've had about 25 new companies started with about $47 million of revenue, excuse me, $49 million of private capital raised. And, you know, instead of describing the numbers, I figure we can hand it off to Lauren and Tim to chosen their companies. And I think it's a great example, you know, of things that have come out of the class and, you know, happened to have some real world impact that we're excited about. So, Lauren, do you want to leave us off, please? Great. So Safi, the company that I am, co-founder and CEO of, build software to drive efficient and clean growth for factories worldwide. We use simple sensors that clip on the power cord of any machine and actually track the electricity flowing through that power cord as a proxy for how much current the machine is drawing and how much, how loaded it is, which is pretty cool for a factory team because it shows them exactly what their machines are doing in real time. And works not just for the brand new machines for which you can get all the data on the planet, but also for machines that are decades old. I was on the phone this morning with a factory in Wisconsin that has machines built in the 60s. So getting those old energy hog machines into the cloud so they can become more efficient in their usage, reducing idle time, reducing unplanned downtime, conserving resources is pretty darn cool. And then also, because we're tracking electricity of each of those machines, what we're doing is laying the foundation for the smart grid. Sensors on the biggest machines in the biggest energy users on the grid are going to enable demand response, integration of renewables, sizing and financing of clean and efficient solutions in a way that we just think is pretty darn cool. And we actually incorporated as a public benefit corporation while we were in a CV so that we built that mission of fighting climate change into who we are as a company. You'll notice none of our messaging talks about the climate change angle because our factory managers fundamentally care more about their productivity. But we're really committed to being able to drive that impact once we reach scale with these factories. And we actually started in a really unusual first market of Kenya. So Nairobi Kenya is where my husband is from. And we started working with a group of factories there, which was definitely a forcing mechanism to develop a solution that was robust, very usable for users of all different educational backgrounds and actually ended up delivering tremendous value for those factories. They've stuck with us since COVID expanded to more machines. And during COVID we realized because I was stuck in my parents' basement and started cold emailing factories in the US. But there are actually a ton of factories in the US with really old machines who could also benefit from exactly what we built. So we started selling to them a couple of months ago. And if I look really tired, it's because we doubled our customer base in the past month and things are starting to take off really, really quickly. And just to speak to SCD and how this all started kicking off, I cannot speak highly enough of three things that I just think are amazing about the class. The first is it's a full boot camp. So I remember every week coming in and having to present on how many of those 70 conversations we had had, which forced us to make sure that we did really good due diligence on the space and learning about all the things that I actually ended up finding really valuable later, like patents and incorporation and all of that stuff. And just super appreciate the forcing mechanism of having all of those things presented to us and walked through for our business by the teaching team and the speakers. And it was actually in the office hours at SCD that we first got the idea to use sensors as part of the business, which is now the core of the business. So big shout out there. Two more things. The second that I wanted to talk about is exactly what Joel said about that specific network within energy and climate. I think we took most of the other entrepreneurship classes at Stanford as well. During the MBA focused, I think 13 different classes on this specific project and SCD provided that tailored climate and energy focus that was really key for us and totally unlike anything those other classes provided. And last but not least, the teaching team is just amazing. Not only, you know, all the credentials, the amazing things about their backgrounds, but on a personal level, one of my single most memorable moments in the entire both MBA and undergraduate Stanford was biking across the EV parking lot. I don't know if I pulled this to you, but I was biking across the EV parking lot. And I'd just been reading this massive email exchange where Joel just like went to bat for us during this kind of tough fundraising, just about when we were about to graduate. And he was just putting himself out there for us, going to bat for us in a way that like as I was biking, I remember this like wave of gratitude just radiating out from me that someone would do that for me. And it made me really first of all grateful for the chance and for the class, but also really grateful for the opportunity to hopefully do that for others. So Joel, thank you. Really, really appreciate it and can't speak highly enough of this class. Thank you so much, Lauren. Tim, how are you going to top that? I don't know. That was great, Lauren. And I fortunately actually the first time that I took SCV, it was with Lauren and SOFIA Analytics. So just like they've gotten to see our journey from the beginning, going back three and a half years ago, we've gotten to see their journey. So I'm totally unsurprised by both Lauren's great endorsement there and also all the success that SOFIA has had. So it's actually really fun to come back, not just to talk to the Stanford community, but to see like another data point on how far SOFIA has come. So congratulations on all that. That's really exciting. For me, my journey into energy at Stanford and then SCV started a while ago. My career actually began in the oil and gas industry. I was a drilling engineer for an oil company based out of Houston. I'm from Texas originally and got to participate in the big shale boom when I was kicking off about a decade ago. It was an interesting career path, but the more I learned about climate change, the more I realized that I did not want my career to be getting a little bit more oil out of the ground. And so I started this journey of figuring out where could I go to actually help solve climate change rather than make it worse. And when I stumbled into the world of geothermal energy, I got very excited about it because I realized that I could do what I was already good at, which is drilling wells, but do it for a clean energy resource instead of something that produces more fossil fuels. And then the more I looked into it, I realized that there was this huge technology gap where a lot of things like horizontal drilling and distributed fiber optic sensing and advanced computational analytics that have been developed in the oil and gas industry hadn't transferred over into geothermal. And I wanted to do that, but I was at the time at a total loss on how you would transfer technology from one industry to another, especially when just testing one thing in the field of geothermal requires you are to drill wells and spend $10 million and do it all, you know, speculatively on an unproven technology without revenue. And so I decided my path should come through Stanford. Stanford has both a great MBA program and then a phenomenal school of earth sciences where I got to take a lot of geothermal reservoir engineering classes and do a lot more through the IPER program. And about two years about in my second year with the program, I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I was debating through from some different options, including management consulting offers. But I actually heard Dave Danielson talk at a seminar and he gave this discussion about the fierce urgency of now and how companies take so long to scale up because climate is such a big problem that the correct time to start a company if you're passionate about climate change or the correct time to join a company or devote your efforts to it wasn't sometime in the future, but it's actually right now. So I actually walked out of Dave's lecture declined my job offers and management consulting and signed up for the SCB class with with Ferbo energy and the classes where I felt really at home and what we were trying to do. I mean, every climate venture is different, but in ours and the characteristic of a lot of them is there's a lot of science involved. There's a lot of hard technology. You're doing things in the physical world and that requires a very different skill set than a lot of the classes that I took on entrepreneurship at Stanford and Stanford in general because, you know, a lot of the rules about like move fast and break things. I mean, that's not a great rule if you're talking about innovating in the automotive industry where your mistakes can result in and loss of life or when you're doing big physical projects. I mean, it's a very different mentality to have. And also, I mean, Lauren talked about patents, like that may not be a part of consumer facing business, but it oftentimes very much is in the climate venture and your customers are very different. I mean, selling to a regulated utility or a cement company or you name it is a very different process than what happens a lot in entrepreneurship. And so actually having a teaching team with people like Dave and Joel was tremendous for not only just starting to learn about entrepreneurship, but doing it in a way that's very specific to actually tackling the big problems in climate and the teaching team came up with some things that are actually really core to our business model today and how we actually monetize geothermal technology through them and the network at Stanford. We met our first investors. I met my co-founder several of our advisors. We were able to launch the company confidently at the end of 2017 with already lined up a quick plug for Activate here, the Psychotron Road program that the teaching team helped connect me with, which was a two-year program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab that led us iterate on our technology and provided financing for that as well as finding funding from breakthrough energy ventures and other venture investors in the space and RPE. I mean, all of these things came as a follow on from advice or introductions that the teaching team gave to us. And for the other day, we've been fortunate to raise over $10 million in venture financing, another $5 million in grant financing from different government grant research institutions, and have actually demonstrated our technology in a geothermal well for the first time in a really productive test. So that puzzle of how do you raise enough money to test something new and exciting that is really capital-intensive and has a lot of risk to it is something we've solved now. And we actually have field data that shows that our technology works and it's going to revolutionize the geothermal market. And the SCV team was just a huge step in our journey there. It couldn't be more appreciative for them. So thanks, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your orientation week. What an exciting time. And yeah, be on the lookout for SCV in the future. Great. I think we have about four minutes for questions if anyone has any. I think there was maybe, I think maybe the chat questions are already being answered. Yeah, we're answering questions in the chat. And Lauren, Tim, thank you. That was great. So if I can cover some questions in the chat maybe and then we can open up to anybody that wants to raise their hand. Yeah, it looks like Josh, you have your hand raised. Do you want to ask away? Yes, hi. Thanks so much for the presentation. I have two questions. One, can you explain the differences between the different unit options? I know this quarter is a little different, but going forward. And then is this like, is this a class, basically, I've known I want to take this class since I joined the program at Stanford. But I'm almost like, quote unquote, waiting for the right time. As in, should I develop some more skills first? Should I come in with an idea that at least has some promise? Is that the right approach? Or do you think if you're interested in entrepreneurship, just go ahead and take it. And if you need to take it again, you can. Great. Let me take the second question and then let me have Juliana or Paul take the first question on credit. So on the second question, I would say most certainly take it in the fall quarter. So we are trying to get everybody who has the best perspective on what we view as the next wave of exciting opportunities to start companies in. And that changes almost year to year in terms of you watch the sets of waves coming in. And you're looking for something that there's a huge problem. There's some enabling factors that kind of allow you to address it. But there's not 10 other companies that are trying to do the exact same thing. So that's, that's who we're trying to bring in in the fall. So I'd say that's critical to get in there. And then to kind of bring Lauren and Tim into it, they took it in the winter of 2017. And they both took it for a project that was not SOFI or was not Ferbo Energy. And I would say to try to take it and get into the office hours as soon as you can, like the winter quarter. And that's what that's what Lauren and Tim did. And then they came out of the gates in the spring quarter of I guess it would be 2017 with those concepts. And we're going to be doing office hours every week, including in the fall. And I would say work with the TAs and us to get into office hours. But I think it's more of a process. And if I can just say one more sentence, I think that in terms of the skill set that you want to learn in the class, it's not about any specific company. It's more about the ability to run something all the way to ground by talking to a lot of experts and seeing if there's an opportunity there. And I would say you kind of have to do 10 of these to kind of really get comfortable with that you pick the right one. So I would say just be agile and say, okay, let's go run one thing to ground. And hopefully you'll learn enough about the space that you have that skill set to run a bunch of things to ground and then find the right thing. So let me hand it on, you know, Julianna and Paul to take the other part. Thank you. Sure. I can answer the question about unit count. So for the fall, of course, the summer series will be one unit. And then for the winter and spring course, which is project-based, you can enroll for either one, two or three units. The workload will be the same, but the variability exists so that grad students who have a unit cap are able to enroll. And definitely if you're interested in participating, but you have zero units available in your schedule, just reach out to me or Paul at any point and we'll find a way to get you in the class.